poliphilo

I believe I have said all I once needed to say. If I continue speaking it is out of habit. I could, of course, repeat the things I once needed to say, but I hate to do that.

Actually I'm not entirely sure what the things I needed to say were. They had their moment. I spoke them. The moment passed. The archive of this blog contains them- if you care to look.

Ars longa vita brevis: in fact the reverse is true.

Here's something I'd like the archive to contain. A poem I wrote a good while back. The names are the names of the pleasure cities of the Nile delta- which were gaudy and gimcrack in the days of Antony and Cleopatra and have since been flooded.

CANOPUS, HERAKLEION, MENOUTHIS

Once they danced here in tavernas,

Pigged on cakes and calimari,

Shagged divinely in the myrtles,

Praised Serapis, Lord of plenty,

While the flute-song, lightsome, winsome

Jigged above the sounds of water.

Light, bright water, sun-shot water,

Thickening as the diver searches

Silts in which white marbles sicken.